played 6.5 hours straight the first day i got it can i get a uh.. booyaaaaa (that's my hyper demon sticker, very popular)
it's super fun making different designs and now i've been playing for 13 hours... second day in... and i will never stop but i got a little cranky having to make boring designs for the quests. i know it's a game and not my own actual store but like can't everyone just want this?
and this?
or this?
and this?
or this?
and this (i actually have that sticker in real life.........)
or this, and THIS...
anyways, main point of game is this
ya dig?

˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖˖⁺‧₊˚ ♡ ˚₊‧⁺˖

Yakuza 0 is generally considered the modern day gateway into the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise for numerous reasons. Not only is it a prequel that doesn’t require any prior series knowledge to understand what’s going on, it’s constantly regarded as one of the best games in the series by a majority of the fanbase. While I had emulated the original Yakuza prior to my first playthrough of Yakuza 0, I didn’t really have a desire to play the rest of the franchise until after I finished Zero, so for all intents and purposes, it was my gateway too. After playing it back in 2022, I spent a good chunk of 2023 playing through every single game in the series currently available on Steam, including the spin offs. Needless to say, I’ve become a huge fan of the franchise. After playing almost every game in the series, I wanted to return to Yakuza 0 and re-evaluate it with my knowledge of the titles that come before and after it. I was really pleased to find that I still consider it the best of the Kazuma Kiryu-centric games.

Coming from Yakuza 5, which had five playable protagonists, Yakuza 0 scales down to just two: series star Kazuma Kiryu and his long-time rival/eventual close ally Goro Majima. I think that dialing back on the amount of playable characters was absolutely the right call. It allowed for both Kiryu and Majima to have plenty of room to breathe in each other’s own lengthy campaigns.

The story is undeniably one of, if not the best in the franchise. It’s more straightforward compared to the complex conspiracies of Yakuza 4 and Yakuza 5, and I think that it’s better off for it. Its focus is on telling an emotional narrative that enriches the background of both Kiryu and Majima while giving some sorely needed additional context to the original Yakuza game, and it absolutely knocked it out of the park. This is in part due to this game’s mostly original cast of characters. These characters and events do an absolutely tremendous job explaining how Kiryu and Majima become the characters that we know today. The clash of each character’s extreme and over the top personality is what makes Yakuza 0 such a thrilling and emotional joyride.

The three lieutenants of the Dojima family are some of the best and most memorable antagonists in the series, with Daisaku Kuze in particular standing out with his venomous tenacity. Other characters such as Makoto Makimura and Tetsu Tachibana serve as the core of the story’s emotion and mystery, as getting to the bottom of their true aspirations and learning about Makoto’s tragic backstory is a huge appeal of the narrative. Then there’s Akira Nishkiyama, Kiryu’s sworn brother. He was the primary antagonist of the original Yakuza, but one of the biggest problems with that game’s narrative was that it barely featured him. We had no real context to their relationship and how close they were, so the character was completely forgettable as a result. This game fleshes out their relationship immensely, with some of the most heartbreaking and hypest moments of the entire series featuring the two brothers.

To make up for the lack of multiple characters to play as and to keep combat feeling fresh and varied, the game uses the Style System that was introduced in the original version of Like a Dragon: Ishin to offer multiple ways for both characters to approach combat. I really like how the Style System was implemented in Zero. Each of Kiryu and Majima’s Styles concentrate on a particular element that makes up the complete moveset that they would go on to use in the games that take place after Zero. It’s a brilliant idea, even if it does come with some flaws.

Kiryu’s Styles are Brawler, Rush, and Beast. Brawler feels like a slower and less snappy version of his moveset from the prior games. It feels like he hasn’t quite figured out his approach to fighting yet, but he’s on track to getting there. It’s a solid all-rounder Style that’s good for just about any occasion. Rush is a boxing-inspired Style that places emphasis on speed. It’s mainly used for taking out a single, troublesome enemy, as well as during boss fights. Beast is Kiryu’s crowd control Style. It places emphasis on his raw strength. He becomes extremely slow in this Style, almost immobile. In exchange, his attacks become a lot stronger and way more effective at clearing out a group of enemies… so long as he has a large object in his hands. By itself, Beast is not a very effective Style. Kiryu’s attacks are just too slow unless you’ve got a large object that you can use to help you armor through attacks while swatting away groups of enemies at a time. Otherwise, enemies are generally able to get easy potshots in on him and keep him from getting started simply because his attacks just have way too much wind up. More often than not, this Style is a hindrance, and you can do some smaller scale levels of crowd control with the Brawler Style, so I tended to mainly swap between that and Rush when I played.

Majima’s Styles are Thug, Slugger, and Breaker. Thug is Majima’s equivalent to Kiryu’s Brawler Style, only Majima has had more experience as a yakuza than Kiryu at this point, so this Style feels faster and more precise compared to Brawler. Slugger has Majima wield a baseball bat. He can swing the bat in very wide arcs which makes this Style great for crowd control. He also has access to a really easy and brutal Heat action with this move. Breaker is a bit confusing. It also seems to be a crowd control focused Style, only it’s a lot less effective than Slugger. Similar to Kiryu’s Beast Style, it takes too long to perform the crowd clearing attacks that Breaker has. It’s not as unwieldy as Beast, but Slugger just provides easier and more effective crowd control, so I saw little reason to use Breaker.

There is a fourth Style that Kiryu and Majima have which are both referred to as Legend. Both Legend Styles have Kiryu and Majima play the way that they do in previous games. I can’t really give my opinion on these Styles because they’re locked behind two obnoxiously long and grindy mini games that I’ve never bothered to complete. I wish that weren’t the case and that these Styles were either unlocked by reaching the climax of each character’s narrative or by simply beating the game. I think that it would’ve been extremely satisfying unlocking them after the biggest emotional moments of the story to use during each character’s finale segment as opposed to completing two overly long mini games.

The game has 16 total chapters, and it’s structured so that every two chapters, you swap between Kiryu and Majima. This does unfortunately lead to some pacing issues early in the game, as in addition to both characters’ narratives being slow at the start, you have to sit through a tutorial for every single combat style. All six styles come with their own little mini-story completely separate from the main plot. They make the opening hours of the game a bit of a drag. Once the narrative begins to pick up however, it really picks up, and the game becomes immensely hard to put down once you make it past those early hours. There’s also all of the various substories and side activities that you can do, which can add some spice to those slow early hours. The substories might not be as effective if you haven’t played the other games in the series, because a lot of them feature younger versions of characters that you’ll go on to meet later in the franchise, like Shinji, Daigo, and Ryuji, so the significance of them isn’t apparent. It’s not a big deal though, as it just makes it all the more rewarding when you do encounter them in the future and remember the funny substory they were featured in here. There’s still plenty of substories that are just there for pure fun, in fact, I think that Yakuza 0 has the best substories in the series. There are so many memorable and satisfying ones that are worth going out of your way to complete.

Yakuza 0 is such a good time. Returning to it after playing the other games has been an absolute joy. It was really fun comparing and contrasting it to the games that come before and after it. It perfectly captures every single aspect that makes the series appealing. The fun and satisfying combat, the exciting and heartstring tugging story, and the enticing side content are all mostly at their peak here. It’s a game that’s truly earned its reputation, and I feel like I’m never, ever going to get tired of revisiting it in the future.

Why yes, I know of A Hat in Time, also known as the second-best Hat based 3D platformer released on October of 2017 ever made!

In spite of my repeated claims of love towards the 3D platforming genre, I would lie if I said I played every single one of the so called classics—I’ve yet to touch a single one released on the PSX that isn’t Medievil and play any of the 3D Rayman games—, but beyond that lack of experience with older titles on my end, the main reason I haven’t actually sat down and played more regularly newly released 3D platformers is because… there aren’t many to choose from. It's a game landscape somewhat rejected by most bigger studios, which tend to see the concept of platforming in a 3D space the concept or base for a bigger game in another genre rather that it’s own, and at this point, it has become somewhat of a special occurrence when two major titles of the genre release withing the same yea, hell, we are already lucky if at least one does.

With all that said, it’d be impossible to categorize the genre as as ‘’dead’’, not by a long shot; the indie scene is doing gods-work for that to be a remote possibility, and now-a-days, I kinda associate it with that scene, not that I think of it as a smaller or more niche genre than what it once was, on contraire, it’s a vibrant, more personal and passionate landscape, the ‘’people’s games’’ so to speak, and I think that particular spark that each developer both what makes so many people feel like they are gambling

A Hat in Time released on a very interesting year for the genre, not necessarily the best or worst, but it certainly had variety, with released from big publishers and small teams, of majestic quality and of pretty big disappointments, and it’s in this year which was probably the most full the genre ever had during the past decade, in the month where the band new 3D Mario game released, it’s where despite it all, A Hat in Time shines.

I can’t really tell what the game is going for exactly visually and tonally, but whatever it is, keep it coming ‘cause it works. If I had to compare it to something, I guess the best thing would be the sometimes referred as ‘’double A’’ games of the sixth and seventh generation. Those character models than can look rough and sometimes even clipping into each other but are so cartoony and full of life that is more than worth it, that humor that should tonally clash with the cutesy vibe but instead it works to a tea, the incredibly silly storyline that finds ways to be memorable… It’s not the prettiest nor the the funniest game out there, but it still exceeds at those areas, with some parts and scenarios looking kind of beautiful or selling completely the spooky or silly vibe, and with jokes that in any other context would make you wonder ‘’how did they get away with this?’’ with how deranged and good they can get.

It can sometimes feel all over the place, like pieces of different puzzles that somehow fit, which I’m inclined to believe it was intentional with how the rest of the is. There are four different worlds divided in four chapters, and when playing through ‘’Mafia Town’’—ignore for a moment that is quite possibly the singles best idea for a first world to ever be thought of— I thought I knew what this was going for, a Sungine/64 like game, with big open levels you can explore that change a little bit every time you go to a different mission, or ‘’act’’ as they are known in this game. And I mean, yeah, all worlds are divided into acts you must beat before facing the final boss of each world, and there are some extra challenges you can find that reward you with a Time Piece that are VERY Sunshine inspired with what quite possibly is one of the most relaxing tunes I’ve ever heard, but aside of that… you better be prepared from some chaos!

You got everything you could possibly dream of: two birds (one of whom may or may not be racist towards penguins) competing to get a movie award once again after years of rivalry and you being thrown into the mix to help both and give the victory to one of them, a spirit infested contract based spooky forest that has both one of the most intense moments I’ve lived in any 3D Platformer ever and a fight against a haunted toilet, and a free roam mountain top stage that is the only of its kind in the base game. There ain’t much consistency here, and that can actually work; it made each of this random ass places and these weird mafia mobs, birds, ghosts and goats that inhabit it all the more endearing. Everything that has to do with Snatcher or the Conductor and DJ Groove is gold I swear to god, their whole chapters being centered around them and the movie sets or deals they out Hat Kit through made them even more memorable than they would already have been… AND IF THAT WASN’T ENOUGH THEY GOT SICK AS HELL THEMES WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-

The music in this game also doesn’t make any sense, but not because it’s absurd or inconsistent, but because it’s too fire; it’s a constant blessing to the ears, with either bombastic and exhilarating themes or the most calming and fitting sounds to ever be thought while jumping and diving. I already linked two completely different yet amazing songs, and I could fill this review with even more, this is one of my favorite overall OSTs I’ve heard in a while, there’s a reason so many people use all the Chapter 2 songs to put in the background and Your Contract has Expired blew up years back, it’s too good to pass up.

The lands of A Hat in Time are plagued by charisma and charm, the only thing that would make them better would be being able to traverse th- OH WAIT YEAH! Hat Kid’s move set is actually pretty deceiving; it seems pretty in both theory and practice, it’s just a double jump, a dive and an attack button, but it actually that allow for super fluid and creative movement, and that make it even more rewarding to pull it off. Even when you are not tested with a mini challenge to earn an item or pons, it’s always a fun time to bring the movement to tis limits; you are almost invited to skip sections and reach certain parts in a way the game didn’t plan to, either through pure movement prowess or intelligent use of the hats (Fast hat and Fox-mask my beloveds…).

Getting any kind of reward, be it a Time Piece or something like a Badge or cosmetic change, feels fulfilling not only because the process of getting it is fun and unique, but also you most likely gained something else along the way, like reading a fun story as it unfolds… if that story had a bit of an annoying camera.

As much as I love how A Hat in Time nails the creativity and fun actor, there’s always a thing or two that puts a sour taste in my mouth. At best they are annoying decisions that really don’t make much sense, like blocking certain acts behind a pong-wall or making the grappling hook a badge instead of a direct upgrade, they both don’t seem like that big of a deals, but the former is incredibly inconsistent (and this time not a good way) and it only serves to take away your pongs at random intervals, which is something I simply do not understand when it’s limited to the first two chapters and when there’s already so many stuff to spend off and losing that money on something because the game said feels unwarranted; and the latter is… it’s just a bit dumb I think? The grappling hook becomes an integral part of your set once you get it, and practically all of the following challenges require you to use it or, at the very least, make traversal much more natural and fun, so from that point on you’ll essentially only have two badge slots since one will always be dedicated to it, and I personally think that incorporating to the roster of Hat Kid’s permanent tools would have made MUCH more sense.

But still, those things don’t necessarily worsen the experience… others very much do tho! You are never in full control of the camera, which is fine since it has clearly been thought out to work better in more open spaces and in those instances is buttery smooth, but then there are moments like Chapter 2’s Act 2, which is a super fun stealth mission focused on gathering clues while exploring a train, that I’s absolutely true, but is in those moments where the camera’s weaknesses shine bright, making it impossible to really know what’s ahead or even where you need to go, since your main hat will always point to your final current objective and nor the place you need to go first (which is another can of worms of its own), and moments like this are scattered through the game and make me wish they did something similar to how it is in Vanessa’s Manor or Chapter 4’s windmill. As it stands, is a looming annoyance that pops out here and there, just how the attacking dive can be a pain in the ass to know at which height you need to be for it to work, or how the checkpoint system can screw you off at a moment’s notice if you fall in the wrong place, or how the can get surprisingly buggy or sometimes say ‘’NO’’ to the strategy you wanted to do with random invisible walls, or how- I think I’m gonna leave it there to be honest…

It's a congregation of decisions and dumb mistakes that pile up and can sometimes make segments feel a lil’ bit like you are doing a to-do-list, which is funny ‘cause in Chapter 3 you do exactly that except it really doesn’t feel like it! It was during Subcon Forest that I begin to get suspicious but in Alpine Skyline I felt it was confirmed; most of these problems were most likely originated in early development, ‘cause A Hat in Time, even with this mistakes on its back, just keeps getting a better. Mafia Town is not a bad introduction and I do like it in some ways, but also presents some problems and structure the other chapters don’t have, like incredibly simplistic boss fights, having to repeat some sections or getting lost through the map to find sometimes, or secrets that aren’t that fun to get; it works but it’s hard not to look at it as the weakest of the bunch, and hell, I’d say the Mafia are funnier in the following chapters and on the ship than in their own town!

It's certainly a humble beginning, a charming onje no doubt, but one that pales in every department with what come next; Battle of the Birds is a super cool set of more linear challenges with and creative sets that gets brought down a bit by some strange decisions (needing to go Chapter 3 before being able to finish breaks the pace completely for me) and the fact that main point of the whole chapter doesn’t really play into much with the final fight except for some model swapping, which doesn’t change the fact that the Conductor/DJ Groove fight is incredible, I just wish it had a little bit more meaning beside DJ Groove getting too cocky or the Conductor being a petty bastard. Subcon Forest is where the true magic happens, the contract system doesn’t really play into much, but it justifies the act system way more, and the area itself hits the spot with its spooky looks as different sections, and has my two favorite fights in the entire game and my favorite level, so yeah, hard not to love it. And then… there’s Alpine Skyline, I’ll say right now that I thing its finale its pretty annoying and doesn’t really play into the potential of the area, but aside from that, this is the highest peak of the game for me, there’s no contest. Maybe I like too much this style of semi open world divided into more linear challenges, but I’m sorry, this area has it all; a killer setting and design, the most fun platforming obstacle courses in the game, a completely free roam experience that feels open even when you are following a set path, and the lighting system to mark you finished treasure hunting in a certain sections it’s a simple yet genius touch I wished other parts of the game had.

A Hat in Time is a testament to improvement, at how a game can get even better as it goes along and end on a higher note than it ended with, but even more than that… is an ode to fun. You can sit down in a ton of places just to admire the scenery, you can do certain emotes that don’t affect the game at all but are just fun to use, you can screw around the main space ship and find random secrets like Hat Kid’s hideout and learn about her thoughts after each completed act. Things that if they weren’t there I wouldn’t have complained, but now I can’t imagine the game without them, and it’s filled to the brim. It’s an experience made out of love that ‘s hidden even in the most obscure corner, a love visible even in he rougher edges, a love that’s shared by so, so many.

A Hat in Time is ‘’the people’s game’’, the workshop is put at the front of the main menu and mods and the community work are baked into the game itself, a celebrated effort that’s only there because the has managed to inspire even 6 years later, and I can sit all day and complain all I want, but that’s always gonna be there, and people finding ways to be in this crazy-ass mafia filled world just a little longer is wonderful to see, and understandable; A Hat in Time is charming, it’s fun, to point of being contagious, you could even say it made me feel the normal amount of empty inside, maybe even less.

It's a game that says ‘’Get lost!’’ to grumpiness, and I for one join it in its chant! I’ll be back real soon to seal more deals and explore the metro, that’s for sure, how could I say no to more of this kind of 3D platforming playfulness?

The textbook definition of a flawed masterpiece.

It's no secret that the original Final Fantasy VII is a legendary game that changed the gaming landscape forever - would a remake ever be able to live up to it? Well, I'd say it depends on what you're looking for. I've only played the original FF7 up until the Shinra Building, so I can't really answer this question more in detail, but I can tell you the remake (and possibly the rest of the trilogy) is an exceptional experience, IF you're willing to accept something different. This might sound weird, so let me explain.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is not an 1:1 remake of the iconic original game. Without spoiling anything, it's trying something new in the already established world of Midgar in the hope of pleasing both fans of the original game and newcomers entirely new to the franchise or Final Fantasy VII in general. I'm not trying to give too much away, but basically, there are those new mysterious entities, and a common complaint is them being too involved in the plot. I wasn't a fan of those either for a long time, but after finishing the game and understanding their purpose, I reflected on their inclusion for a bit and then thought they were integrated fairly well actually. To sum things up, FF7R doesn't replace FF7 at all; they both have the same major plot beats, characters and everything, but are heading into different directions. This way there are new surprises in store for returning players, but it also brought out frustrations in others, since now will never be a "true" remake of the original game - and I can totally understand that sentiment.

The identity of 7R however wasn't the reason why I called it a flawed masterpiece in the opening sentence, instead it's some things that still could have been better. Even though I had a fantastic time with the game as a whole, I feel the need to still address those problems, as I'm not only writing those reviews for myself, but also to help others. With that out of the way, the most apparent flaw is the amount of filler content every now and then. A good example of this is near the end of the game, where the party backtracks to a previous dungeon as part of the story to retrieve an important item for another character. The issue at hand: a monster has stolen this key item! This results in a 30-minute segment of tracking down the monster by backtracking through the exact same segments of this dungeon used previously in the game. At least you get a sweet resolution for that character at the end, so it's not all for naught. But coming back to the dungeon/level design, that's a point I have mixed thoughts on. On one hand, Midgar in the original game was incredibly linear and the world only really opened up later, on the other hand, the remake could have fixed this - but this is where they decided to stay faithful! The Hallway Simulator™ complaints are entirely justified, however it never was that much of a problem for me, since those dungeons look pretty atleast and you get many fun conversations with your party members along the way, so it doesn't feel like the game is trying to waste your time.

Generally the setpieces are more lively than ever before, the little details everywhere and the new third-person camera make for a so much more immersive experience than the top-down view of the original game. My favorite example is the Wall Market chapter in the remake, the lighting and bustling streets really sold me on the festive vibe the devs were going for. The entire segment was a real joy to play through and it is a prime example of extending the overall playtime in a meaningful way. This also applies for the Collapsed Expressway and Train Graveyard in the remake for me, for fans of the original game those areas might be too long (as they were only one to two screens long in the original game), but I loved how the devs expanded on those already established locations, it adds to the sense of scale in the massive dystopian city of Midgar. In general, I believe this "sense of scale" is exceptionally well done throughout the game, there are several occasions where you can just gaze in awe upon the towering buildings of the city from below or some other parts where you can look from a high point into the far distance and see all the detailed infrastructure on the horizon, it's genuinely impressive how they handled it.

You know what else is genuinely impressive? The combat in 7R. It still follows the same rules as the original ATB system, but with more player agency. Instead of just waiting for some bar to fill, you can block and dodge enemy attacks (ironically, blocking is better 90% of the time, as the dodge has no i-frames!) or deal some physical damage by yourself. All of this is accompanied by intuitive switching between characters in the middle of a fight in order to exploit enemy weakness with certain Materia or gain access to different skills and movesets. With the return of the Materia system, every party member can be individually built to one's likings - you may turn someone into an Electric AoE damage dealer or give everyone in the group an Ice Materia for some reason, there's a lot of different combinations! Summons are also back and they look just as cool here as you would expect. Unfortunately they're not available too often, but on the flip side this means their appearances against hard bosses are even more satisfying.

Now, I don't think anything has to be said about the soundtrack. It's a Final Fantasy game, so obviously it's near perfection. Uematsu and the crew put a lot of heart into the new songs and remixes and it shows. There are so many good tracks and it's hard to choose favorites, but one overworld song that particularly stands out to me for being surprisingly captivating is the theme of the Collapsed Expressway. In terms of battle themes, the Ghoul fight is an incredible new composition and if we're talking about remixed songs, [this video contains spoilers!] the iconic One-Winged Angel got an utterly fantastic orchestral rendition in the remake. They really went all out in remaking an already superb soundtrack and certainly didn't miss.

So yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to playing Rebirth eventually, but I'll probably play through the original FF7 first (hopefully in the near future). I love those characters and this world so much and I can't wait to see where their adventure is going next!

Billy Hatcher is like if Mario 64, Glover, and Super Monkey Ball had a baby.

This is such a chaotic idea for a platformer and I'm shocked we never got more than this game despite Sega treating this like one of their mega franchises back in the day.

Coming from the team behind Sonic nonetheless, comes a platformer which is probably better than a lot of the 3D sonic games.

Billy Hatcher and the giant egg is structed like a 3D Mario game where you're given a couple of worlds with multiple missions where you need to collect a "Star". This time all platforming revolves around spherical oval that we tend to call an egg.

Billy relies entirely on the egg for platforming the same way Glover relies on a ball. When you have an egg, you roll it around kinda like a super monkey ball game, but you do many tricks such as bounce, dash, shoot, pound and throw (amongst other tricks). I'm sure if you spent a lot of time with the controls, movement would be found to be deep as hell.

The gameplay loop is pretty fun. You find an egg and you can roll over fruit or enemies with the egg. The more fruit your squash, the bigger your egg becomes, the more damage your egg does to enemies. If baddies manage to break your egg then you will have to find another one and increase it's size again.

While the game is mostly good platforming fun. There are a lot frustrating moments and the game can be a bit unfair with how punishing it is. Although if you play on an emulator I recommend using an infinite lives cheat so at least you start from a checkpoint rather than starting a level all over again.

I wish Sega someday revisits this franchise, because with some even more refined controls and more intuitive level design, I can see it being a great platformer series.

I really love what Tchia is doing, but I don’t really think the game itself is very good. There are certainly cool parts to it, but as a whole, I do not think it is particularly fun.

The heavy cultural roots of the game are so incredibly cool and a big draw. Admittedly, I had not really heard of New Caledonia prior to playing Tchia, but I love how the game pays tribute to the country and cultures there in ways that can be appreciated by someone like me who knows nothing of it. Gameplay-wise, soul-jumping into animals and random shit is dope. Jumping to a deer to sprint around the world and ragdoll into walls, or fly around as a bird to cover big distances quickly is rad. Don’t have an animal? Jump into a rock and then slingshot yourself into the air by chaining soul-jumps. It’s extremely cool! And I wish the game was just that, but it’s not. It has a boring story, long cutscenes, bad minigames, poor pacing, and a pretty empty world.

As described above, the best part of Tchia is the soul-jumping, but you have to play through a painfully boring 90 minute intro before getting the ability. And the opportunities to use the ability are entirely dependent on the objects around you. At one point I had to traverse through a large swampy area to find an item and the only thing I could possess within the area was a crab. While funny, after 3 seconds as a crab, I realized that my only real option to get where I needed to go was to just run slowly as this small child. And, man, that sucks. When I can be a cool bird or a fast-moving deer, any time spent as the kid just feels that much worse.

I played Tchia for 2 hours. In those two hours, I was introduced to about a dozen new minigames, 5 of which were not good rhythm sections. I love love love that the game used artists from the region to record original music. I do not need to play a bad rhythm game to experience said music. There was also a rock-stacking minigame with shoddy physics, a totem-carving minigame which requires a full restart if you make a mistake, a shooting range, and more. None of it really was worth doing

I wanted to love Tchia so badly. I wanted to experience this culture I was unfamiliar with in a new way, but man I just was not having enough fun to keep playing. I respect the heck out of the dev team for making this game and I’m so glad they did, but I think Tchia could’ve been a better game if the scope was reigned in just a bit.

+ Beautiful cultural representation for a country that never really appears in video games or media in general
+ Soul-jumping is rad as heck
+ Music is lovely
+ Ability to skip any segments you don’t want to play

- Intro is way too long
- Too many minigames
- Bad rhythm sections
- Not enough opportunities to soul-jump resulting in frequent, boring instances of running around as a slow child
- Feels a bit too ambitious for the small team they had

the opening montage of Up really destroyed a whole generation's concept of effective nonverbal storytelling by making them think a parade of prefab domestic clichés embellished with flavorless Milestone clipart set to overbearing music is in any way sophisticated or interesting huh

this girl is a tasteless unfuckable dweeb and i wish her all the worst. the way she's simultaneously a self-insert wish fulfillment character AND the most hapless and bland cozycore dork imaginable is really dark tbh. inexcusable taste in stuffed animals! stop decorating with your diploma already you absolute MONSTER!!! When a sappy celeste-adjacent chiptune ballad plays as it's revealed via context clues that she came into her own after a trip to Japan (and returned w/ a bevvy of basic tourist kiosk tchotchkes) and now feels confident enough to explore rockabilly-lite fashion...hell. It's all so flavorless and antiseptic--she is 30 where the hell is her hitachi wand and why CANT i stuff her horrid garb into the closet in the ideal organizational format--the pile? the subject here is so unpalatable that i honestly would have preferred they scrap the whole progressing narrative concept entirely (esp. when its used in such an unambitious way that communicates very little beyond trite sentimentality; life has its ups and downs, #gratitude, don't make time for haters who dull your shine, the more things change the more they stay the same, when god throws out a mug he buys you a wacom tablet) and instead present a medley of varying rooms/spaces occupying a plethora of subjects, aesthetics, and experiences, but also idt the same devs who chose this protag have anywhere near the worldliness or savvy to attempt something like that. impressive amount of unique isometric assets and cool implementation of foley though!